


the castaway

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: After the Blackwater, Alone in an Island, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Desperation, Elements, Existential Crisis, Gen, Gods, Isolation, Loss of Faith, Loyalty, Starvation, castaway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 05:47:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5616016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, disillusionment in nine parts</p><p>    iii- <em>Men are men. All do some measure of evil, to differing degrees, and all do some goodness, small as it may be. Most are born small and stay small, other are born great and what they do about it is entirely their choice. </em></p><p>  <em>Men are men. Men, no matter how just or strong or admirable, cannot be gods. <em></em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	the castaway

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

  
― _Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov_

 

 

 

i- On the fourth day sleep gives him scant rest until dusk falls. By the time he wakes the sky is a purpling bruise and his head aches worse than before, and his heart worst of all.

There are no traces that any ship had ever passed his piece of rock.

 

ii- Wintertime mist sets in. It does not fade the next morning, or the next, or the next.

 

iii- Men are men. All do some measure of evil, to differing degrees, and all do some goodness, small as it may be. Most are born small and stay small, other are born great and what they do about it is entirely their choice.

Men are men. Men, no matter how just or strong or admirable, cannot be gods.

Davos weeps, and this time it's not for the mortal dead.

 

iv- Some days he fancies he can hear the gods.

Oh, they rarely speak to him. Mostly the wind gods goad this storm deities on, while the sea gods's laugher comes from the depths and arrives painted in white foam. The Mother reminds him of Marya, sending the boys to buy something in the market. Oftentimes they came back grinning and speckled with mud, and whatever parcel she had wanted ended up dented or scratched.

The Father curses him with his own words, and after that he's warier of what his ears think to hear. It rings too loudly not to be doubtful.

The voice he hears most often is not so great as that. Davos has never trusted much in his life, but he trusts the sea, trusts it to betray him always and care not a whit, loves it about as much as he hates it. It has been his truest home, the one he named himself after. If he must learn the world all over again, it is by the tide he will guide himself.

This voice does not echo in the waves, comes not with the ringing of the chilling breeze. It raises like a storm and falls quiet with grinding disappointment, speaks of duty and fate and things that have no place in this small place of the sea.

He staggers around the rock and asks, begs for a response, a task, something. It never answers. It is only so long before he realizes he is only speaking to himself, and when he does he sinks his knees to the stone until they bleed and does not pray, because there he has no god to pray to.

Somedays he can hear the gods talking, but most times he ignores them

(sometimes he doesn't).

 

v- Every once is a while fish come gasping to shore when the tide rises. He eats a few, biting throw the scales and swallowing the pricking bones. The others he uses to lure in the gulls, before crushing their heads with rocks and eating them cold.

Lobsters are easier to come by, now that it rains constantly. He breaks their pincers from the red shells and fashions himself something like a lance to stab fishes with. Fishing with sticks was a sport amongst the street urchins of Flea Bottom, he remembers, though it was easier with wood. He dwells in those memories with new eyes now, almost longing, and it becomes easier to feed himself.

A piece of cloth that might have been part of a sail once floats nearby and he braves the heaving water until he grasps it. A wave gets him under, his grip slackens and he nearly dies. He tries to deny that he was disappointed without noticing he is doing it. It makes him laugh out loud because it's the first time he notices his lies self deceiving and there's no one to blame it on but himself, no one to excuse but this wreck of a man who was once an honest liar.

He laughs, it rains and by the end of the day he's still as empty handed as he was in the beginning.

 

vi- The rain trades blisters for freshwater, but it is hardly a fair deal. He laps at the damp stone. cups his hands and drinks until he throws up, but all the while at the seeps into his bones with every sheet of icy water and howling wind, and his back aches from his hunching position on the small grotto. He does not know what being dry is like anymore, and every venture for for food is shorter and less successful.

It was this fear that made his gratefulness so great, and for the knowledge his sons would not suffer as he had he had made him turn a blind eye too often. But now his sons are dead, gone in a blaze of fire while wearing sigils of flaming hearts, the ones that remain do not know him, his wife perhaps even less, and Davos does not have it in himself to be grateful to anyone.

Worse things than rain come soon enough, naturally. The northern winds clash with warm air currents from Dorne, turning the western sky a grey mantle bordered by flashing purple threads. Distant thunder accompanies him for two sleepless days spent hoarding as much gullmeat, lobsters and fish as he could before the storm strikes.

He leaves bloody marks on the stone while scaling the highest point of his spear of rock. It is hard to find purchase with only one whole hand, harder still not to feel guilty for cursing out loud. It feels like breaking something, like raising his head to a surface after too long floating in the blue underwater. It feels like the betrayal, and tastes like salt and copper and a castaway cursing at the coming storm.

That is when he decides he is going to live.

 

vii- He was not certain he wanted to before. It felt like too bold a choice, something that was not his place to make. But of course it was his choice. One cannot gives one's life to another, not truly, not wholly. Nor should they.

He wonders if the king- the man who was not a god- ever took the time to grieve for the ones who gave the selfs for him. He wonders if he knows how.

Davos has had many lives. Only now he sees they were all the same. Urchin and smuggler and knight were the same man, as was the orphan and the brother and the king.

It is a cruel thing to do, to think a man is more than he is, lesser than all the parts of his nature.

 

viii- The storm comes. It turns the world black, the uncaring purple blue black of the sky and the sea when they quarrel. The world is shattered into a million pieces time and time again, the rock swallowed whole more than once, more than a score times. Davos thinks he hears the gods cry, but if they speak their voices are as muffled as small as his.

The storm passes. In the morning half a dozen pieces of wood keep company amongst the dead fishes, ropes entwined around mangled sails. His hands go to his chest without his order, but this luck had nothing to do with bones or men or gods.

 

ix- When the makeshift dinghy rolls in the tide towards a spot of land, the only one to greet it is the wailing gulls. It was an easy journey, with no further storms and amiable winds. If he were one to believe in gods Davos might have been temped to thank his luck.

But his neck is bare and his chest feels empty, and castaways have no use for prayers.


End file.
